A Thread For School of Seven Bells Love!

A winner is you, in the end.

Heart Is Strange and Bye Bye Bye are about as New Order as you can get without wheeling out Bernard Sumner.

Incidentally, these are my fav. two songs on the album!

Show on Saturday night was really spectacular -- and made more interesting by the fact that Claudia wasn't on stage! I gather she was ill, but they still put on a show and if the full harmonies were missing everything else made up for it. Ben is way more active on stage now and Zachary the new drummer is a hell of a good fit as everyone's been saying. Also loved the fact that the set was almost all Disconnect songs.

I admit it was also pretty fun when Ben looked over at one point, stepped up to the mike and went "Ned?"

While about larger things my Foxy Digitalis piece this week was also something of a show review:

http://www.foxydigitalis.com/foxyd/?p=812

I admit it was also pretty fun when Ben looked over at one point, stepped up to the mike and went "Ned?"

looooooool

I am seeing these folks this Saturday, for like the 4th or 5th time in a few years... never gets old.

Also loved the fact that the set was almost all Disconnect songs.

This is good but also kinda sad -- I love that first album. Can't we just get them to play both albums, back to back, in full? =/

Bye Bye Bye are about as New Order as you can get without wheeling out Bernard Sumner

haha was just thinking this about bye bye bye, which I listen to obsessively on the drives to and from work. it's like the bastard love child of st. etienne and new order. the end is so good, I want to loop the hook for another five minutes.

Just posted on their Facebook page...

Hi everybody. We just wanted to let you all know that Claudia has left the band for personal reasons. In the meantime, we are excited to continue to write and tour as usual, and we're very much looking forward to seeing you all at our upcoming shows. ♥ Alley and Benjamin

Is Claudia one of the uglier ones in the troupe?

In terms of chord progressions and all that. The name should be sacked for starters the spoilt brat

ahem.. well there goes a perfectly good thread

I don't like this development. Well, either of these developments (Claudia leaving or the introduction of assholery into the thread).

Indeed, thanks for nothing Fer Jessie.

WELL -- in that case, I can say that I caught one of the first shows in the new lineup, then! I will definitely regret not seeing them do Disconnect stuff with Claudia since not hearing the full harmony overlay live was certainly a missing element but as everything else pretty well killed, roll on whatever's next.

Wonder if she was really "sick" for that show, Ned, or...?

I missed the Austin show three days ago, sadly, and can't find any info on whether Claudia played w/ them. :(

To be honest I didn't exactly catch what Ben said on stage, it sounded like he said she was indisposed or whatever but it was more than likely something generally vague.

Looking thru Facebook comments, it sound like Claudia was out for the Dallas show so I'm guessing Austin as well. Btw, Ned, the band linked (and commented on) your foxy digitalis piece on their FB page. :)

Yeah, very nice of them!

Nice job on the Fallon show tonight, but could barely hear Ben's guitar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3bz6Kble2Q

I never saw them live with Claudia, but I'm assuming she filled in some vocal harmonies that seem to be missing here. Regardless, it was nice to see one of my favorite songs of the year being played on national tv.

I'm assuming she filled in some vocal harmonies that seem to be missing here

Spot on. I wonder if they're going to get a replacement for her at some point.

I saw them in DC a few days ago and it just didn't click with only one vocalist. She did her best and sounded great but that's how those songs are supposed to sound. It didn't help that the synths and a lot of the beats were played from a laptop, though that's forgivable. Still glad I went and they are obviously a talented group.

Acoustic "Dust Devil" as part of Take Away Show knockoff: http://vimeo.com/13924411

It's also fucking fantastic

damn, i didn't know claudia left :(

Just posted to their facebook page:

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs970.snc4/76295_497684106062_32542831062_7673918_5660143_n.jpg

These will somehow feature in the upcoming video for "I L U". Mostly I'm just happy that there's going to be a video for "I L U".

Video for "I L U" finally up. It's exquisite in every respect.

http://vimeo.com/17016568

The not-clipping-your-guitar-strings trend is so hip rite now.

Also I dunno if it's just me but these guy's really aren't so much a shoegaze band to me anymore. I don't know what to classify them as but it's just way too minimalist with the latest album.

Not a complaint, surely.

Don't know how I missed this before, but this Siouxsie cover is terrific: http://vimeo.com/16176931

thankig u!!

I am juuuuuust hearing them for the first time right now; halfway thru "Disconnect from Desire" and I can tell you that this is easily one of the best albums I've heard this year. It's v Curvey but not as lol90s

Heads up Los Angeles!

LA people- We’re doing a very rare full acoustic set live in LA on Wednesday. Should be cool. Check by here soon for details…

Acoustic show (well, acoustic guitars augmented by laptop + POD effects box) tonight was fantastic. Even played the Siouxsie cover...

Whatever they end up doing next, I'm on board.

I just got around to picking up Disconnect From Desire

what a fantastic album

Indeed!

Told ya.

it's funny, because on my first listen I was all "this isn't a shoegaze album, wth were you all talking about" and then I heard the implied feedback/wash of sound and went "....OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Hahah. (Now imagine what it's like live.)

kicking myself for not going to their show because I didn't know any of their music when they came through town

Seeing them live was very much the trick for me getting into the band to start with, as I mutter upthread somewhere; having said that, the new album is so consistently strong that it can be its own gateway.

hate to say that as much as i love the new album, the first one does it one better-- if not for the songs (which are equally strong on both records), then the cavernous, shimmery production, which took a slight step down on the new one

that said, "ILU" is the best tune they've done by FAR soooo

I still haven't managed to get into the new album, apart from "Windstorm". Somehow it lacks the intimacy of Alpinisms for me.

Two clips from the show tonight. They're just killing it live these days...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGR9oiMOpMc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5IRzQMG8zs

how's the live set without the 2x vocal harmonies thing?

It depends... I've seen them twice w/Claudia and twice without and out of all of these shows, I liked last night's one the best. I do miss hearing Claudia's harmonies, but they're overcompensating in interesting ways. Ben is basically doing everything now and hops around like a crazed mad scientist guitar hero. Ally has a stage presence now that she didn't really have earlier and with all the noise they're making now I wonder how much of that harmony would get drowned out. Hopefully, Claudia could make an appearance at least on the next album?

Having played Disconnect From Desire to death for about a month now, why is "I L U" the default approved song? I mean, it's a good song, but it seems very... safe, I guess? It's a very straightforward beat, very simple vocal line, very simple vocal harmony, very simple instrumental arrangement... it seems like the least representative song on the album of what this band seems to be about (syncopation and vocal harmony, mostly).

"Camarilla", on the other hand, is just full-on great. I love the way the harmony comes in on the verse and the moving thirds in the second half, mixed in with the creepy suspensions in the low voice of the chorus.

try just getting over a breakup and then listening to I L U
'i want you to know that i loved you' is just extremely emotionally powerful

Yeah the words do take it to a pretty high level, once they sank in.

But "Camarilla" and "Jovian" are just as A+.

yeah forgive me but I'm not about to break up an 18-year relationship so I can truly feel a song

like I said, I think it's a good song; I just vibe off of the musical choices of most of the other songs on the album more

I hadn't been through a break up or anything even close when I first fell in love with that song, but I could identify with the feeling by memory...which I guess is way harder to do if you've been in a relationship for 18 years. But even discounting that angle, the chorus's melody just cuts my guts like a knife.

It's not the melody, though (which is very basic pentatonic scale motion); it's the chord progression that is interesting/impressive in the chorus of that song (and that's mostly because of the false cadence on the first two repetitions followed by the real cadence with suspensions on the outro).

Also IMO the killer line is "And I was a fool to think/It'd be easier to leave/Than to be left behind"; without that, the chorus is kind of powerless and context-free.

(I do like the song a lot but it doesn't strike me as THE SONG of the album, partially because its construction is out of step with what's happening on most of the other tracks.)